Nitricity
For the past 110 years, ammonia has been produced by the entrenched carbon- and capital-intensive Haber Bosch (HB) process. The HB process is responsible for 5% of global natural gas consumption and 1.6% of global carbon dioxide emissions each year. Ammonia is a primary feedstock for nitrogen-based fertilizers, industrial chemicals and pharmaceuticals and projected to grow to $100B market size by 2020. Existing ammonia production involves centralized facilities that require a complex system of distribution channels to deliver ammonia to the end-users. Additionally, current solutions for decarbonizing the ammonia industry involve the electrochemical production of hydrogen, which is exceedingly expensive. Nitricity is developing a device that produces carbon-free, low-cost ammonia using a novel metal-cycling process. This device, named GD-17, can produce ammonia using only air, water, and renewable electricity. Furthermore, GD-17 enables the production of distributed ammonia directly to end-users in agriculture, industry, and the growing energy storage field. Nitricity’s breakthrough technology has the potential to reduce global carbon emissions at a gigaton scale while dramatically simplifying the ammonia supply chain and disrupting a $100 billion market.
Team Members
Joshua McEnaney (Post Doc, Chem E), Nico Pinkowski (PhD, ME), Brian Rohr (PhD Chem E), and PI: Prof. Thomas Jaramillo (ChemE)
We believe in carbon-free NH3.
Learn More
2020 MIT Clean Energy Prize Grand Prize Winner Nitricity May 2020
Fertilizer startup Nitricity wins BASES 100K challenge April 2020